ENGINEERING LIBRARY BLOG

	Title:	Managing Technology Legal Issues Leading Lawyers on Transactions, Agreements, and Intellectual Property Management
	Publisher:	Aspatore Books
	Availability:	Click here

Although this title is written by and for lawyers on intellectual property issues, the writing is easy-to-understand and the bite-sized article format mean that any reader will be able to appreciate the strategies detailed. There is also a substantial appendix with sample agreements and checklists.

The authors expertise is mostly in U.S. and international law but the advice is universal, with some of the 12 articles offer sound and practical recommendations specially crafted for the technology industry. In an extract from Chapter 2: Top Ten Mistakes by Companies Regarding Intellectual Property, Randall Broberg lists these in descending order as:
10. Too many trademarks
9. Failure to consider the nature of your industry
8. Letting little company defend the big company
7. Sharing ownership of IP
6. Licensing trade secrets like they are patents
5. Failure to file trademarks in foreign countries before doing business there
4. Failure to plan for time after patents expire
3. Turning a blind eye to competitors IP
2. Failure to consider the need for speed
1. Failure to remember patents and trade secrets are in conflict

In the last point, Broberg describes aptly the conundrum that is at the heart of protection of intellectual property, which is its continual tension with disclosure and innovation. “If the code is truly a trade secret and cannot be reverse-engineered, filing a patent will reveal the secrets to the whole world …”  “In sum, the easier it is to reverse-engineer, making trade secrets ineffective, the more appropriate it is to patent a product. Looked at from the other side, if you can truly keep your technology secret you probably should, and either forgo patents altogether or seek patent protection only for aspects and parts of your technology that are easily capable of reverse-engineering.”